In South-Africa, people are dealing with extremely
different realities in their everyday lives. In spite of homosexual marriages
being legal since 2006 - a legislative step consistent with the 1996 inclusive
Constitution which forbids any discriminations on the basis of sexual
orientation- the statistics of rapes are among the highest of the world, enlightening
the existence of a crisis of masculinity in a country still embedded in a process
of nation-building.
Those against lesbians are characterized as
“corrective rapes”, implying sexual violence is used as the solution to correct
those women’s sexual deviance. Such women are considered as traitors to their
country, and their race. This phrase used by western Medias widely contributes
to the victimization process of those women, in spite of them being strongly
involved into community and political movements, particularly against HIV/AIDS,
in order to change the community perceptions on feminine homosexuality and, in
the end, being legally and socially accepted into the South-African nation.
More pessimistic than Laurent Chambon, it does
not seem to me that the end of apartheid has resulted into the true emergence
of a rainbow nation, in which a harmonious national unity would emerge from a
disastrous regime that would remain unique in the African continent for its
physical, moral and legislative violence. Of course, it is the country of
Mandela, but the reconstruction process is not over yet. And neither is the
healing one. Mandela enabled the creation of a society free
from discriminations in order to remedy to the numerous ones that prevailed in
the South-African society – and particularly against its black population-
during the apartheid. Not only did banning the discriminations on the basis of
sexual orientation in the 1996 Constitution constitute a true landmark in a
continent in which homophobia is truly violent, but it also did in the world.
Nevertheless, the facture splitting the South-African society into two parts
does not only rely on differences of social status. Other dynamics emerged and
contradict the actualization of a post-sexist society. This is particularly
prevalent in a country where a woman out of three is likely to be raped at
least once in her lifetime – and that would be the only time I would use
statistic, for they tend to consider South-African women as a mass of sexual
preys. Indeed,
despite the fact that homosexual marriages are legal since 2006, this legislative
step is to be perceived as a rupture, and not a social progress. It seems that
this law does not fit with the current social framework, which includes new
forms of manhood being spread; those masculinities are violent, include women
submission, and a socialization to womanhood bond to those overwhelming masculinities. This
submitted feminity is perceived as the only acceptable form of feminity. When
alternative feminities are produced, the masculine violence is always in the
corner. There is only one feminity. Only one way to be a woman. The deviant
ones must be corrected so as not to disrupt a national community still embedded
in the process of nation-building.
Looking back: brief historical contextualization
During
the apartheid, the authorities imposed a real control over their citizens’
sexuality. Many amendments were implemented (like the Immorality Acts of 1927
and 1957) to limit and regulate sexual intercourses between white and black
people, in ordre to preserve the racial division that preserved the ideology of
the regime. Above
all, black bodies and sexuality(ies) were to be controlled, and especially the
black male ones, previously perceived as animal-like, promiscuous, and deviant[1]. An entire system was therefore set up and
aimed at containing this sexuality considered as violent and unbridled. It is
all the more natural that this system should have emasculated black men, for
not only had they lost the power to act in the public sphere because of the
colour of their skin, but they also had no power over their private lives, and
especially over their sexuality. Therefore, the end of the apartheid opens up
to a crisis of masculinity characterized by violence, arising from the
townships where the economic poverty of the blak population continues despite
the end of the regime. Actually, it seems that the end of the apartheid is
marked out by the evolution from a black masculinity regulated by the white
legislator to violent masculinities that submit others (and women in particular),
and hardly tolerate those who do not match the patriarchal stereotypes.
This
form of manhood is not imposed from the top for it takes roots in social
dynamics which escape the legislative control: the legislator indeed fails to
impose its social control over the population. Corrective rapes show citizens
have replaced the law as the primary instrument of social control, allowing
themselves to discipline those considered as “deviant” in the system, like lesbians.
Thus, normative discourses elaborating new forms of violent masculinities that
gather black men together in their common repression of homosexuality – through
socialization processes to manhood that rely on on an active masculinity
against a passive femininity - talk people into perpetrating what they consider
as “legitimate” rapes, despite the interdiction of the law. (like the
Hate Crimes Act from 2000)Inclusive law vs exclusive
statements
Paradoxically
enough, condemning hate crimes does not lead to an acceptation of homosexuality,
as we can see with many intolerant political statements. On the contrary, homosexuality
is stigmatized in many African countries, in an extreme and violend way in
Uganda (where death-penalty can be currently applied against people suspected
of homosexual conduct) but South Africa does not escape this rethorical
stigmatization (the current president, Jacob Zuma, considers homosexual
marriages as a “dishonor”)
But
it is way too simple to assert homosexuality has been imported by colonizers,
as it is often the case in political discourses. “Heterosexual Africa” is a myth. Not only have same-sex practices been comprehended
in the local frameworks of power[2] for a long time, but they are also tolerated
in many communities. Nevertheless, defining oneself as homosexual and having
same-sex practices are two different things: defining oneself as homosexual
urges the elaboration of a juridical framework and implies that heterosexuality
is excluded from one’s life plan.
It
is this very “western” conception of homosexuality –homosexuality as an
identity- that is rejected by a part of society and politicians, despite the
fact that same-sex practices have been accepted for a long time. An authentically
heterosexual Africa is as much a historical fraud
as it is a political strategy. The countries that spread this kind of
discourses try to distanciate themselves from the West in order to regain
control over the elaboration of their national history, their traditions, their
customs therefore conceived as detached from the Western influence during and
after the colonization, at a time when a worldwide standardization of values is
taking place.
Moreover,
this political instrumentalization of homosexuality aiming at mastering the
exogenous influence has severe internal consequences. A country like South Africa
has failed to implement policies consistent with the contemporary stakes for a
long time, and especially that of HIV/AIDS, which appears as a major issue
since the end of the apartheid. The virus had been deeply stigmatized and
associated with MSM (men who have sex with men) practices, particularly since
Thabo Mbeki’s term. In 2000, he assimilated several times HIV to a supposedly
deviant sexuality, and denied that HIV was at the origin of AIDS. With these
public statements, not only were the homosexuals further stigmatized and “legally”
discriminated against, but efficient health policies against the pandemic were
also indefinitely postponed.
These
kinds of discourses involve the spread of stigmatizing prejudices, and silence
some of HIV/AIDS ways of transmission. In the process, they contribute
emphasizing stereotypes about homosexuality and also reinforce the patriarchal
society as those statements are consistent with an heteronormative and
“respectable” society (for those adjectives often go along together) And a
society in which sexuality remains taboo and health politicies exclusive is a
society that reinforces the patriachal society for it undermines any
possibility for women to take control over their sexuality(ies).Escaping victimization:
Butch lesbians activism(s)
It
is therefore only logical that butch lesbian should be violently repressed. Investing
the public space with masculine physical markers, and asserting their sexual
orientation in the process, are already acts of activism, especially in the
townships where the police protection is weaker, and new forms of masculinity
the most violently expressed. Homosexuality is put forward as a part of butch
lesbians’ identity. Even though this form of activism does not seem to be structured.
Lesbians
are corrected through rapes, and butches in particular, for not matching the
ideological criterions of womanhood, socially and in their sexual practices. There
is only one possible womanhood. There is only one sexuality. Being a woman goes
along with the necessity for her to be penetrated. Being a woman one again
includes the same “rite of passage”.
Nevertheless,
not only do “corrective” (or “curative”) rapes not lead to the transformation
of their sexuality, but they can help them develop new strategies of
empowerment.
Paradoxically
enough, the experience of the rape can re-conceptualize butch women agency,
overcoming the violence they went through and escaping a victimization process.
It might enable them to escape the framework of silence (that of women, that of
lesbians, that of rape victims) for not only is it perceived as a violence
against one’s own body, but also against all women’s bodies. Lungile Cleo
Dladla, when she tells her story in an activist lesbian blog from Johannesburg,
does not only denounce the violence exerted against her body, but also this
violence as being revelatory of a dysfunctional South African system, towards
lesbians, and towards women in general. It is also after being raped she
develops a form of activism against in HIV/AIDS by making this threat visible
through her words: far from letting her be trapped into the status of victim, she
transcends the rape –for being directed against what she represents and not
only against her as an individual- and delivers her story publicly. In the
process, she is showing a form of activism and how crucial it has become for
the South African society to elaborate a new discourse on homosexuality, on
sexuality in general as well as to launch new actions tackling sexual issues.
This
kind of strategy is all the more necessary to be underlined that it is not an
exception. Lesbians actively participate to the re-composition of social
networks in the post-apartheid space by witnessing of their specific problems, through
associative means (like in the Inkanyiso blog in which numerous
autobiographical articles are published) but also through the artistic ones as
we can see with Zanele Muholi’s work, a photographer and a GLBT activist from Johannesburg. In Faces and Phases, she exposes a series
of black and butch lesbians’ portraits from the townships. Through this work,
she makes butch women visible, and not deeply associated to their status of
victims or the violence they are subjected to.
The
South-African homosexual youth is active in the emergence of this kind of
community networks. This activist youth proves to be willing to get inserted
into, and to work with, a repressive society. For instance, we can see this
with the Thokozani soccer team (which took part of the Foot for love in June
2012) composed of twenty-one black lesbians soccer players which is highly
committed toward other people: not only do butch women gather to escape the
violence and create what they define as a “queer community” with this type of
collective, but they also which to give hope to other lesbians and to educate
people outside of their collective. In the process, they show they can be
inserted into the philosophy of the Ubuntu[1] , praised by Mandela, and could be productive
in the current process of nation-building.
Eventually,
the South-African miracle may be found in those networks, in the diversity of community
projects, activisms, individual and punctual actions, which rely on the wish to
link what is collective to what is singular and, following Mandela’s path, not
to build against, but with those who oppress and reject. Mélanie VionNotes
[1] “In Ubuntu, the
southern African sociocommunal philosophy, individual existence is expressed
through communal interdependencies, sharing, reciprocal obligations, and
responsibilities. Therefore, in Ubuntu freedom is circumscribed by belonging in
a community, primarily referenced through kinship.” In Mikki van Zyl, Are
Same-Sex Marriages UnAfrican? Same-Sex Relationships and Belonging in Post-Apartheid
South Africa, Journal of Social Issues (2011), p337[1] Something particularly underlined by Patricia Hill Collins in
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual
Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (New York: Routledge, 2005)[2] Marc Epprecht, Heterosexual
Africa: The History of an Idea from the Age of Exploration to the Age of AIDS
(Athens: Ohio
University Press, 2008), p38